Bear researcher Lynn Rogers sued the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday, asking to be allowed to continue his work putting radio collars on wild bears.

In his lawsuit filed in Ramsey County District Court, the Ely-based researcher also asks the court to allow him to continue filming the bears via his popular Internet “den cams.”

The suit was filed a day after Rogers asked Gov. Mark Dayton to overturn the DNR’s June decision not to renew the permit for Rogers’ Wildlife Research Institute.

The DNR says Rogers’ methods, including hand-feeding bears, have made them lose their fear of humans and become a public safety threat.

Dayton declined Rogers’ request but said he could seek an impartial review by an administrative law judge. That process would take six to nine months.

On Tuesday, DNR spokesman Chris Niskanen said Rogers “has chosen not to go that route.”

Without court intervention, Rogers will be forced to remove radio collars from 10 or so bears and shut down the den cameras. That, Rogers has said in interviews and court documents, could end his career, as well as a prime fundraiser for his nonprofit enterprises, the WRI and the North American Bear Center in Ely.

The bear center, a major tourist attraction, still holds a game farm permit for captive animals, but Rogers said it will suffer an “immediate and irreversible effect” if the collars are removed and the den cameras turned off.

The DNR and Rogers have clashed for years over his methods.

The lawsuit accuses the DNR of denying Rogers due process, but at the crux of the matter is whether bears fed by humans can become a public threat.

Rogers contends they cannot, and in the lawsuit says the DNR has presented no scientific evidence to the contrary.

In his primary study area — Eagle’s Nest Township around Ely and Tower — more than a dozen residents are known to provide food to bears in what Rogers and his team call “diversionary feeding.”

The practice consists of leaving the food away from homes so bears don’t seek food in homes but elsewhere nearby. The practice has gone on for years, and in his lawsuit, Rogers states the DNR has not sought to prohibit residents from doing it.

However, Rogers has also hand-fed not only the bears wearing his collars, but other wild bears in the area, a population of perhaps 50. And Rogers has, in recent years, overseen “field study courses” — which attendees pay thousands of dollars to take part in — where paying customers hand-fed wild bears. In one 2008 photograph obtained by the DNR and the Pioneer Press, a teenage boy is offering bear food from his mouth, a practice Rogers has also been photographed doing.

Rogers’ most recent DNR permit expressly prohibited anyone except lead researchers from hand-feeding bears. Steve Barnish, who participated in one such course earlier this year, said leaders repeatedly emphasized that only lead researchers were allowed to feed or touch the bears.

Conventional biologists strongly criticize such behavior. Bears that lose their fear of humans will undoubtedly land themselves in situations where people are fearful — and perhaps in danger — and bears will be killed, they say. Such a case happened last summer when a bear collared by Rogers refused to leave the area around a garage where a mother and two children were located. A DNR officer shot and killed the bear.

That bears become accustomed to people is not disputed by Rogers; he disputes that they’re a danger.

According to the lawsuit: “To Dr. Rogers’ and the Research Institute’s knowledge and belief, no person has ever been injured by a collared bear that has been the subject of their research.”

The DNR sees it otherwise.

“Since 2009, we’ve received 58 complaints from this area about troublesome bears, and we’re hearing more and more from citizens in that area who say they don’t feel safe around bears who see humans as a source of food,” Niskanen said Tuesday. Niskanen declined to comment on specifics of the lawsuit but said the agency will respond in court by the end of this week.

Niskanen emphasized that Rogers has been aware of the DNR’s objections for years.

“We have been talking to Dr. Rogers about this issue for more than three years,” he said. “This is not a new issue. It was because of his inability to comply that caused us to not issue a new research permit.”

In his lawsuit, Rogers claims DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr rebuffed several attempts to meet with him in 2012. It also cites an email Landwehr sent to someone who had complained about Rogers.

“We are clamping down on permit restraints while we continue to build our case,” Landwehr wrote.

“It will be a big, public battle to rein this in, so we need good information.”

As outdoors editor for the Pioneer Press, Orrick fishes, paddles, hunts, skis and romps across the region while staying on top of outdoors news. When the occasion demands, he's also been known to cover topics ranging from politics to golf. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and son.​

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